Home brewing prompts a few intrepid farmers to try hops

Wendell Byler clipped his way through a sheet of hanging hop bines. The long, leafy plants, now freed from their roots, swayed in the wind.

Byler wiped his brow and looked up at Ted Noble, clipping 18 feet overhead from a cherry picker. With final cuts by Noble, bine after bine fell with a thud. Francis Schodowski and his son then loaded them into a pickup truck and continued with the harvest on Noble's Heidelberg Township farm."Wow, look at those hops," Schodowski said, grabbing a particularly heavy plant.Noble dropped another bine."That'll hold us for a while."It's all in a day's work for the four Heidelberg Hop Heads: Noble of Heidelberg Township, Bob Bashore of North Heidelberg, Byler of Lower Heidelberg and Schodowski of Wernersville.They are part of a small but growing number of farmers experimenting with hops, a key ingredient in beer. They are driven, mostly, by the demand created by homebrewers and craft beer makers.Demand for hops growingHops are a major flavor maker in beer. Depending on the amount, they can add bitterness and fruitiness. But you won't find many like Noble and his crew in Pennsylvania.Idaho, Oregon and Washington are the three powerhouse states in hops acreage, according to the Hop Growers of America, a nonprofit trade group. In 2014 Washington had about 29,000 acres in hops, which accounted for nearly 74 percent of U.S. production. But hobby farmers such as Noble are popping up across the U.S., in states such as Michigan, New York and Pennsylvania, said Ann George, an administrator with Hop Growers of America."I think the interest now with some of the new operations that have been established around the country, the Great Lakes region and Northeast, have to do with people who have an interest in craft beer and are interested in potentially being part of that segment and participating at some level," she said. "Maybe they're already farming some other crop and think it would be interesting to start a small hop-growing operation to see if they can make the crop grow in their area."There probably aren't more than 20 hop farmers in Pennsylvania, said Rick Geissler, who devoted two acres in Penn and Bern townships to hops. He calls it Penn State Hops Farm. The only other person he knows growing hops is Noble.The number of homebrewers in the U.S. has increased by 76 percent since 2010, said Gary Glass, director of the Colorado-based American Homebrewers Association.The group's Pennsylvania membership has increased 76 percent, from 965 in 2010 to 1,703 this year."We're also seeing a rapid growth in the numbers of craft breweries," he said.Homebrewers are on the rise because of the popularity of the "locavore" movement, he said. "You're not going to get any more local than homebrewing. You're customizing the beer to your own personal taste."And there's the social aspect, too."It's very easily shared with friends, and friends usually like it when you share beer with them," Glass said.Microbreweies and homebrewers are frequently the people who want to buy locally grown hops.Snitz Creek Brewery in Lebanon bought 50 pounds of hops from the Heidelberg Hop Heads last year.Josh Schucker, Snitz's head brewer, said he's made a beer from hops exclusively from Noble's farm."That's kind of the way communities in general are born, by sourcing things locally," he said. "That's one of our things: We want to source as much as we can locally. To be able to extend that into the brewing operation is really neat."Making it funBack at the Heidelberg farm, the bines have been brought to a covered area where Noble's wife, Mary Jo, cuts one in half and carries the pieces into a work shed. Inside, she, Byler and Schodowski sit on stools around a table and remove the hops from the bines.The slightest tug frees the hops. The fruit looks like a pine cone, but is lightweight and feels like paper. Byler picks several at a time, dropping handfuls into a red bucket.Hops consist of multiple layers of small leaves that wrap around the lupulin glands, which contain the resins and essential oils beer makers covet."The yellow part has the flavor," Byler said. "That's what you're really after."The group fell into a rhythm: tug, bucket and carry the buckets to another part of the shed to dry. They chat about nothing and everything as they work.Suddenly, Mary Jo drops a hop and gives a startled yell. After retrieving the fallen fruit, she reveals a large caterpillar inching its way along the plant. Byler took the hop from her, plucked the bug from it and tossed it outside, then tossed the bug-free hop into the bucket."Oh, Wendell, you're such the hero," Schodowski said.Labor-intensive hobbyFor the Hop Heads, it's a hobby. They quickly acknowledge that trying to make a living off hops alone would be a struggle.George, of the Hop Growers of America, agreed. Starting a hops operation takes a lot of research. You have to understand your market and work backward from there, she said."If you can't sell them, it doesn't do any good to grow them," she said."We would need to plant a couple acres to get really serious about it," Byler said. "It's a lot of work."The hops they sell now merely help cover some of their expenses. Their limiting factor is the labor involved, he said. Last year's harvest took about 200 man hours, but they had lots of help from friends and family."You don't just pick these things fresh and take it to the farmers market," George said. "They have to be picked, separated, they have to be dried to 10 percent moisture and then somehow packaged to be delivered to the brewery."Geissler and his wife started growing hops two years ago just to try it. It was hard, he said. There were expensive up-front costs for equipment, and harvesting is labor intensive."A hop cone weighs virtually nothing, and you're selling it by the pound," he said. "It's kind of a tough deal."For now, Geissler said they'll wait and see if their sales improve."We're going to give it a little time," he said. "If it doesn't turn around we'll put trees back in the field."Contact Jamie Klein: 610-371-5016 or jklein@readingeagle.com.